hanna birke

starting again

developed the 3rd roll with the Zero Image pinhole camera yesterday.  

this is an intentional double exposure with also a frame overlap.  

i feel like every new camera i've had required bags of learning before there is much competency with it - and the Zero Image  pinhole is no exception.  with other cameras it's just taken keeping at it and i hope it will be the same with this one. 

my POSITIVITY book has been lent out so i can't quote directly from it but i believe Barbara L. Fredrickson says spending time outside in the spring and early summer boosts our mood and going outside to places where we can see for a long way has the effect of opening our minds and helping us think more creatively.  we are of course heading in to winter - not summer - but still i love being outside.

i have a mental list of open spaces around here and most lunch hours i try to get to one of these places even for a few minutes.  one day last week i went to an estuary near work at lunch.  i saw crows, an eagle and a flock of small brown birds.  i love watching a flock take off together and swirl around before they land somewhere else.  i also love this estuary spot and i expected to feel a bit lighter by the time i left and probably i did but the real visual treat that lunch hour was found when i returned to work.  i parked my truck in the work parking lot and looked up to see a maple tree i hadn't noticed before - about 80% of the leaves had already fallen off.  there was a slight breeze and the remaining burnt orange leaves were dangling from the tree like earrings or ornaments in motion.  the movement was amusing, beautiful, memorable.  i sat and watched it for a while and even though i didn't write this moment down until now it stands out as one of the most satisfying moments of last week.  

 i've finally gotten my drawing pencils out again.  a big drawing on the wall feels too ambitious right now but i've set up a drawing table and there's a small sketchbook on it.  small pages feel right.  in the past i've mostly drawn from images or objects but now i've set myself a little assignment to draw from inside so i've been doing tiny simple sketches with lots of cross hatching.  i've long admired the work of Agnes Martin - of course these are no Agnes Martins but it's nice to liberate myself from the expectation of making a drawing that looks like something.  

and in knitting news i'm going to rip out what i've got done on the Sound of Waves wrap for my mother and start again.  i'm about 6 inches into this wrap and there are way too many mistakes in it.  my mother has a high tolerance for mistakes in knitting but there are too many for me - so it's back to the beginning with this one.  that's okay.

on the subject of knitting, my mother loves the swatch for the Sound of Waves wrap by Kieran Foley so i've cast this on.  the rows are 327 stitches long and i'm a slow knitter so a row can take me half an hour.  when i slow my mind down i find knitting long rows relaxing, it's a matter of slowing down inside though.

i've put the idea of an Inspira cowl back on the shelf because i don't have enough of the yarns i want to use to make a full-sized Inspira cowl.  also i'm still sorting out what the winter climate here requires.  i'll need warm things of course but not clothing heavy enough for -30 C weather.  a stranded cowl in worsted weight might only be needed a few days a year here.  so i'm floating a few other cowl ideas around my head.  

the week started with 2 days of suicide intervention training.  important training but not the happiest topic.  by tuesday evening i was tired and discouraged.  when 4:55pm Friday rolled around i was finishing up my session notes and looking forward calling it a week.  then the phone rang and my supervisor asked me to speak with a woman in distress.  i'd never spoken to her before but it was clear she was embarrassed about about calling so late in the day, she was hard to keep on the phone at first, saying she was sorry to be so needy.  i reassured her that a few minutes on the phone was a small inconvenience and that i'd rather talk with her than have her hang up still crying.  besides i find needy women who can use that word and acknowledge their neediness refreshing.

a few more minutes on the phone and it was clear i was speaking with a well-educated and professional woman, a peer or perhaps someone with her life more together than mine.  she was having trouble in with her teenage daughter and she relayed the details of an argument they'd just had.  i listened and when she asked for advice i said simply that i'd have approached the situation the same way she did.  

she sighed and said yes that's the same thing my friends would say.  we talked a bit more and then she said well that was my last 10 minutes before i called you - what was your 10 minutes like before i called? 

without thinking about it i told her i was looking at the time and feeling relieved no one had called the crisis line yet and perhaps i would be able to go home on time.  i think my honesty surprised both of us and we ended up laughing and laughing.  it was good to hear her laughing.

we spoke a bit more about the impossibility of parenting well and staying sanely married and ways to create more harmony in a home and then we laughed some more.  after half an hour she said well you haven't solved any of my problems but you've made me laugh. she thanked me and we wished each other a good weekend and then i drove home - much happier than i'd been at the beginning of the week.  

i think i said this before but Ariel Gore, author of Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness, says when we start writing down what makes us happy we might find the things that make us happy surprise us.  

this photograph was taken on Wednesday morning - my neighbor who works on the waterfront asked me for a ride to work and i grabbed this quickly when i dropped her off.  it's the only photograph i took all week that i like.  i was convinced i didn't have time this week for the film cameras and so i took the digital and was frustrated with most of the digital shots.  if i'm going to take photographs again i need to find time for film.

return

A long absence I know.

I was taking a 4 month Photo Arts course.  Between my job and the course there wasn't time for much else.  Most weeks knitting, blogs and even e-mail fell by the wayside.  But I'm done the course for now - will start another one in September. 

Of course my thoughts are returning to knitting.  And my hands will too.

I've cast on for Kat's Ardent Jacket.  Her original is in tweed and I don't have any tweed.  But I do have bundles and bundles of fine Habu merino (Habu  item # A-33, 2/48) and Habu bamboo (Habu item# A-155, 1/17) so I did up a small swatch with 2 strands of the merino held together with one strand of the bamboo.

The stitch order in the swatch is bit mixed up.  This jacket is knit from bottom up starting with Wide Waffle stitch (center of swatch) which merges in to Double Lattice stitch and then you move to stockinette.  I think I'm going to enjoy both stitch patterns.  

Here's a photo of my first sleeve cast on and the first 2 repeats of Wide Waffle stitch.  I cast this on in early April and haven't done anything on it since.  Soon...

 The top photograph is one from my Photo Arts class.  It's a medium format film image of Lisa in her Lolita dress.